The Primeval Garden
by BiblioMatsuri
Summary: From what she's suffered of desire, she favors fire. Rebirth AU, redux of Urban Jungle. Rated for violence and much disturbing-ness.


Disclaimer: I don't own DP.

BGM: "Beautiful Decline" by Abney Park.

* * *

The Primeval Garden

The Mother of All Plants laughed, a vision of unnatural beauty, her siren call carving the will from her victims' minds. Tendrils of beautifully bright green swept through the crowd, dozens of pathetic, filthy humans crushing the grass beneath their clumsy feet. She sneered.

"Go ahead and run, flesh-bags! Wherever you go, you cannot hide from Mother Nature. I will catch you, and your corpses will feed my children. Scream, scream! We will spread, we will grow, we will take back the earth that you have ruined," she gloated. No one could stop her. Cut her, burn her, it didn't matter. The earth had blessed her, and she would always come back.

Casting her eyes about, she caught a glint of light off – crystal? Not metal? Looking closer, she searched through her former self's memories until she reached the correct one: Pamela Manson.

"Oh, yes, I've been looking for you," she breathed. She knew it was petty, a pointless grudge left over from her former self, but so what? She was strong, she was right, she could do whatever she wanted, and she wanted Pamela Manson to _hurt_.

With a wave of her hand, thick vines burst forth from the earth and wrapped around the woman. Ever obedient, her children brought the human up to a spot just below where she stood. The Mother sat, crossing one leg over the other in a gesture she suspected would inflame the human. Sure enough, the flesh-bag stopped trying to escape and started yelling.

"Samantha! What on Earth are you wearing? And just what do you think you're doing, young lady?"

She stopped listening at that point, not caring to hear what the lesser female had to say. It didn't matter. It would never matter, in the end. All humans were food for her children, and to treat them as any more than that was a waste of time. She called for Pierre, suggesting he shut her up.

As the human started to properly fear herself and her children, a faint pain came through her connections. Looking down, perplexed, she realized – they were shooting at her. What, chainsaws didn't work, so they thought bullets would? More evidence that humans were inferior. Glancing at the sky, she noted that it had been hours since she started. Her father would be expecting her.

She made a cutting motion at the flesh-bag that had once been her mother, and its cries ceased. Smiling, she watched the familiar pod form around it and pull it down to their cache beneath the city. The pods would sustain them until enough had been gathered, and then they could begin digestion. "Soon, children, soon. Mother will feed you."

* * *

_The Lord of All Plants laughed. "Oh? You think you can stop me? Pathetic little meat-bag."_

_What passed for his face contorted further as the trees came alive. Gripping her machete, its blade dripping green sap, the girl prepared for battle._

* * *

Frowning, the Queen Mother let her dear little ones set her down on the earth. Where were all the humans? In the crumbling depths of her mind, a faint echo sounded. Eyes widening in realization, she called her children.

"A trap!" she shrieked in indignation. "Pathetic slime – no, slime is better than you. You think you can stop me?"

"Actually, yeah. We do." A thin, immature male with dark skin and a taste of metal and ozone around him stood on top of a bare rock. It smirked, all cocky fight and no fear, but she would have known it was an act even if she couldn't taste it.

"Tucker," she cooed. "I didn't know you cared."

"Yeah, neither did I. Nice look, by the way."

She looked down at herself, chlorophyll green skin like new leaves adorned with curling vines, her new-formed limbs. "Mm, you really think so? So do I," she giggled. "So much better than that drab purple thing with the flowers."

Suddenly, she stopped short. What was she doing? "Pierre! Crush the thing for Mama."

A spike of fear, and it turned and ran as fast as it could go, but not fast enough. Vines bound him, stopping his movements. Quirking an eyebrow, she asked Pierre for one last little thing before he could take a nap.

"Hey, no-!" it yelped.

"Too late!" she crowed. Well, what was this supposed to be? It was thin and metallic, reeking of chemicals. Her children begged her to allow them to destroy it, but she stopped them. Humans were pathetic, but they were numerous and crafty, and this one was craftier than most. Who knew what little surprises were hidden in it, just waiting to be set off? Examining the item, she couldn't see anything but gleaming-new metal and a lumpy weld that went all the way around.

Wait. There were no new machines, not unless they were ecto-powered Fenton tech. She turned it over, and there were six tiny photoelectric panels, bits of glass set into the surface, pale green in the sunlight. How dare they waste the sun's power on these mockeries of nature!

"[Demilo! Get rid of it!]" She hated to endanger her children, but whatever it was, it could not be good news. The human was shouting something, but that didn't matter, he'd be plant food soon enough.

**Pain**. A brittle, sharp pain of leaves withering and stems cracking and fruit rotting on the vine – no! They were freezing her children!

"How!" she roared. "How are you doing this?" Shoving the little metal thing in its face, she spat, "Is it this? How is this killing my children?"

It snickered. "Actually, you want to know the funny thing about that? It's not killing your children."

She had had enough of waiting. He would tell her what was happening, now, or she and her children would make him. She called for Fury. "[Sting.]"

"Hey, wait, what's that thi- Ouch!"

A moment, to let it sink in.

"AAAUGH! Make it stop, make it stop!"

She smiled, satisfied, as it collapsed, whimpering and trying to clutch at its neck. "Now, talk."

It moaned, curled on the ground. Blinking up at her, it choked out, "And I told you, it's not killing them. Not my fault-" It shuddered. "Not my fault you can't figure it out."

Figure it out? So, it was a riddle. Perhaps a new perspective would help. She pushed herself up on her vines, the human and the item following her. She looked around, feeling for the edges of that horrible crushing cold, and froze in shock. Those of her children still on the ground were dying, swallowed up by the frost, leaving only quickly shrinking circle of untouched earth. And around her, the ice retreated. No, not around her – around the machine! She whirled on the human, teeth bared in fury. "You," she hissed.

It glared. "Yeah. Me."

Its machines were doing this, were blocking her and killing her children by the hundreds.

"Why are you so upset, anyway? Not like your children are all that nice. Plants poison each other." It flinched, then spoke again. "Besides, ice is natural, too."

She ground her teeth. Yes, it was, but any plant she sent against whatever foul machine was creating it would only freeze or go dormant, unless…

"[Oh, Pepe!]" She looked back at her captive. No point in sparing him insult. "Two words, flesh-bag: Skunk cabbage."

At its non-reaction, she explained, "Snow melts."

Grinning at its fear as it put two and two together, she turned away, keeping the device close. No use in calling Pepe if she froze herself.

* * *

_The girl screamed, thorns tearing at her jumpsuit, poison working its way into her bloodstream and tearing her nerves apart. She was going to die here, she realized, as the vines wrapped around her arms, forcing her to drop her machete. She gulped, feeling her last resort, a tiny plug of explosive in a plastic casing she'd hidden under her tongue. All she had to do was crack it with her teeth. It would explode on contact with air, and she would be beyond Undergrowth's reach. …At least, she hoped so._

* * *

The Queen Mother of All Plants walked along a path lined with snowdrops, a defensive wall of skunk cabbage on either side.

A pale, sickly-looking human male leaned against a doorway, glaring at her across the battlefield.

She laughed at it. "Why, Daddy-kins, aren't you happy to see me?"

He only drew himself up, eyes flicking from left to right, up to down, likely searching for help that would not come.

Suddenly, it wasn't so funny. "No, of course not," she answered herself, voice dripping with venom. "You were never happy to see me, not even when I was just a pathetic human, bowing and scraping at your feet for a little pocket money, so I could play my stupid little games with my stupid little friends."

It dared to laugh at her. "Before, I'd hoped, but now I know you're not my daughter."

It took one step towards her and continued, "My daughter took games as seriously as everything else."

Another step, and, "My daughter would never deliberately harm her friends, no matter what Pamela or I said."

Another step, and, "My daughter would never bow to family, not to anyone who walks this earth, and certainly not some _ghost_."

She simply stared. The flesh-bag could barely walk. She could sense the reek of death clinging to it, knew that it was far too weak to harm her. She wrinkled her nose at the stench of rancid meat. Probably not even good for nutrients, at this point. She sighed a bit, asking Anya to be ready to take the pod away. Pity it was too cold to use her usual vines. Snowdrops were so fragile.

It had gotten to just over two feet away when it stopped. Her children clamored to kill it, but she stopped them. She was curious to see what this false father would do. "Tell me, human. If I am not your daughter, then what might I be?"

"That's easy," it rasped. "You're the plant-monster that stole her life."

She smiled. Silly little flesh-bag, but much less boring than it had been in her former self's memories. "Perhaps I will keep this one awake as a pet, before it dies," she mused.

Yes, she decided. She would be merciful, for that was a Queen's prerogative. She propelled herself the remaining distance and looked at its face. Its limbs shook, one hand around its ribs. Ick, what a pasty, soft _thing_. Maybe she'd just kill it.

**Pain**. Cold crawling pain centering on herself. What?

She looked down at herself, chlorophyll green skin bleeding human red into a chip of faintly glowing blue ice. She gasped. "You- How dare you?" she whispered, forcing the words past the icy claws gripping her heart.

Jeremy Manson collapsed onto the ground, overwhelmed. He was relieved, relieved that young Foley had not sacrificed himself in vain, that their last-ditch plan had worked. Although that- that abomination that was all that was left of his daughter had bulldozed through an entire guard platoon armed with ecto-guns, then chainsaws, then simply guns and torches, it had stopped to taunt those who had been closest to Samantha in life. As usual, the Fenton's young know-it-all had been right. Damn her.

He felt sick, not only because of the fever that still wracked his body, but in a far more profound way. His daughter had not only been captured, she had been possessed by that ghost, had been brainwashed into thinking she was the queen of plants and that thing's daughter. Damn it.

That abomination had tortured young Foley, even his own wife, Samantha's mother. It had wanted to keep him as a pet.

Hands shaking with suppressed fury, he turned away from the cooling corpse and withering plants. There was nothing left for him here but bad memories and worse sights.

* * *

Trapped in the ruins, Undergrowth screeched in impotent fury. He'd hit the little pest, he knew it, that pestilential spirit that insisted on holding on to humanity. It should be dead, gone, obliterated! Why wouldn't it die?

He grasped for more mass to regenerate with, but no luck. He'd already consumed all the plant life within ten miles, and his root system hadn't reached any further yet. Undergrowth hadn't waited long enough until he staged his second attempt, and now he had to pay the price.

Suddenly, the gaping crack in his surface he had for a mouth curved into a toothless smile. Why, he had a much better food source now.

Undergrowth reached for the preservation pods holding dozens, hundreds of captive humans, just waiting to be processed into humans. Too far, he noted. He wouldn't get the nutrients from this far away. No matter, he could simply call on his newest daughter to bring him a few.

…Why wasn't she answering? Where was the new Mother of Plants? He panicked, reaching for his servant, begging for help, not deigning to notice his already-weakened enemy until-

**Pain**. Freezing pain, as a million shards of ice pierced through his tough phloem. Cold spread quicker than he could have believed, right through to his core.

"No, no! I'll be back, you pathetic sack of flesh and ectoplasm, just you wait," he ranted as he was cut and frozen and broken into tiny pieces.

As the vines withered away, the boy fell back to earth, gasping for breath. "I don't think so," he muttered. Looking around, he cursed, "Aw, crap! He's still not gone? How many times is he gonna regenerate?"

The empty street didn't answer. If anything still lived there, it had crawled into whatever hole it lived in to wait out the battle.

_At least_, he thought, _my gambit worked. Undergrowth was so busy messing with me, he never noticed my trip to the humans' encampment. Ha. Idiot. Even the fruit-loop isn't that arrogant. I'm just glad they figured out how to use the ice in time. And that it didn't melt. And that Frostbite actually helped me. …Wow, I got lucky_.

At the edge of his senses, the boy felt a twinge of too-familiar red-green energy. _Again, crap._

He groaned. It was time to play "find-the-invading-ghost", again. Hoo-freaking-rah. Well, at least he wasn't bored, for once. Reaching for his chill power, clearer and more tightly focused than ever, Danny recharged his tired limbs and flew off.

The last thing the Queen Mother ever knew was the feel of a painfully-familiar pair of arms wrapping around her and a small cold hand crushing her heart.

* * *

_The girl struggled to breathe, straining against the vines wrapped around her wrists. The world was moist heat and frantic movement, the screams of the dying melding seamlessly with the cruel call of the Master of the Forest. She gritted her teeth, bracing for the next hit._

_As the next plant lined up to hit her (Fury, I called this one Fury, she remembered in a haze of green and red), she reached into that knot of compressed power in her mind and pushed out._

_Vines shrank back, flowers closed up, trees rattled and moaned as they retreated. This was not prey. This was something new, and it did not like them._

_The girl grinned, reaching into the neckline of her jumpsuit and withdrawing something small and sharp. "Recognize this, Undergrowth?" she called triumphantly into the depths of the forest._

_Quieter, she continued, "You will, you overgrown invasive weed. I'm Sam Manson. No one tells me what to do."_

_Letting the token fall back onto her chest on its chain, she stalked through the forest, stopping at the broken stump where she'd had to ditch her bag. She unzipped it, pulling out_-

* * *

Pamela forced bone-tired feet through what was left of the inner defensive walls. They were going to need rebuilding, yet again.

Looking around, she saw her fellow abductees, looking just as exhausted as she was, making their way back into the compound. The walls were shot, but the torn-up earth stopped right in front of the hospital. Somehow, the camp defenders must have managed to stop whatever-the-hell-that-was before it got to the hospital, one of the few semi-permanent buildings that had gone up in the months since Amity Park had been abandoned.

"Pam." Pam? No one had called her that since college, since-

"Jeremy! Oh, dear Lord, you're all right!" The adrenaline rush overwhelming the pain of her injuries, she ran to where Jeremy stood waiting and threw her left arm around him, or tried to.

She hissed in pain and pulled back. Jeremy put his hands on his shoulders to reassure her, but that only made it worse. "Stop," she whispered.

"Pamela," he said, eyes asking the questions his lips couldn't shape, not now.

"Yes, I'm injured. Cracked collarbone, cracked rib, broken wrist." At his shocked look, she snapped, "I'm walking, dash it all! That's good enough."

Relaxing minutely, he went around to her less injured side and put one hand on her back, guiding her to the hospital entrance. She leaned into his hand, so slightly no one who didn't know her would ever be able to tell. Injuries or no, she had her pride.

"The others?" he asked.

"One fatality. Some old woman – not your mother!" she yelped. "Some old beggar woman."

He shot her a sardonic look.

"At any rate, by some miracle, only one old woman died. Plenty of injured," she scoffed. "Some walking, a few have to be carried."

Jeremy opened his mouth.

"No, I do not know exactly how many," she snapped.

"That's not what I was going to ask," he soothed. "I just wanted to know if young Foley was all right."

"That boy? He's being carried in. Poisoned, I suppose, since I didn't see any bandages. Why do you ask?"

He smiled wanly, and for the first time that day, Pamela saw through enough of the haze of physical and emotional exhaustion and pain to notice how much smaller than normal he seemed. Even when he'd been trapped in bed with fever, he'd never seemed so defeated.

"I just wanted to know how one of the heroes of the hour was doing." At her quizzical expression, he explained, "Foley volunteered to distract her, both to confirm a theory the Fenton girl came up with and to slow her down, and then to get her into place for a plan we were working on. I was included in the planning because…"

"Because?"

"I knew Samantha, before."

Lower lip quivering, Pamela tried desperately to hold back the sobs she could feel forming. Just a bit longer, until she was in their tent, and she could cry without anyone to see her and judge her weakness. "Jeremy?"

"Yes, dear?"

"She _hated_ being called by her full name."

* * *

-_a chainsaw. She pulled the starter cord once, twice, thrice, and it revved into motion, bursting into flame. "I love you, Tucker, you mad genius you," she cooed at the fatal contraption. "Oh, and Danny's parents, and even Valerie, I guess," she finished with somewhat less enthusiasm._

_Giggling, the white of her teeth and the faintly golden tone of sun-darkened skin standing out against the unending green of the forest, she advanced. Sam hadn't bothered with makeup, for once. It would just run and smear, and no one who mattered was here to see it, anyway._

_There was a clearing in the forest now, ten feet in any direction where the warped plant life had fled from her. Her eyes fixed on a point of red in the green, then two points._

_Stilling herself, Sam smirked. Payback time. "Watch out, you pathetic lump of ectoplasm, because I'm a gardener and I say you're due for a dead-heading!"_

* * *

A small presence that had been hidden within the Mother of Plants finally, finally managed to force itself awake. Slowly, laboriously, the presence pulled itself up. It had been trapped in that neverending tainted poison green for so long, it had forgotten even the smallest things. It had been slowly ripped to shreds, consumed bit by bit until nearly nothing was left. It had been ready to give up and let go.

…Or so it had thought. Half a breath, fourteen eternities before it gave in, a cold light had flooded its prison. Dimly, the presence remembered that cold was normally something to avoid, but not this. This cold was one it knew as well as its own self, blue-white-green scouring clean the soiled pathways of its mind, a fragment of a will that, whatever else, treasured what the presence had been.

No. The light's treasure was not what it had been, but what it would be; who she was:

Sam Manson.

And from here on out, death itself would be too great a mercy for anyone or anything that tried to take that away from her.

A hapless man yelped as the dead body he'd been about to torch sat up, cursing and yelling, and then stopped.

Sam looked down at herself, looking desperately for something to cover herself with. "Where the hell are my clothes? It's freezing out here!"

* * *

_Sam sat down, panting for breath, waiting out the tirade._

_"And one more thing: Where on Earth did you even get a flaming chainsaw? We hardly stockpile those!" Jeremy Manson ranted at his daughter._

_Despite her continuing nightmares and need for medication to sleep through the night, not to mention that her wrist might never fully heal, Pamela had been overjoyed at Sam's awakening. He still got a chuckle out of the look on Sam's face when, the moment she was proclaimed recovered enough for light work, Pamela had hugged Sam with all the strength she could muster._

_Jeremy himself had been more cautious, contacting the Fentons and putting Sam through several rounds of tests, each spaced further apart, until she was proclaimed "clean." Not fully human, unfortunately. The plant ghost had left its mark. Besides the faint green stain in her hair and skin, she would forever be prone to obsessions. In fact, the Fenton girl had informed him, it was quite likely that she had formed one in the process of piecing her mind back together immediately after and for the days following the possession. He had most certainly not thrown a temper tantrum upon receiving the news, merely given those quacks a stern talking-to._

_At any rate, she was back now, safe and mostly sound, or so he had thought._

_"What were you thinking?" He wound down, looking at her helplessly._

_Sam just shook her head. "I had to do it. Undergrowth, he- it- that thing tried to take _me_ away from me," she spat._

_There had to be something he could say to that. "You could have at least told someone before you went off and did- oh, whatever this was," he trailed off, lost for words._

_"Sorry, Dad," she replied. "Really, I'm sorry."_

_Putting a hand over his eyes, Jeremy took a moment to gather his thoughts._

_"Let's just get back to the compound, Samantha. We'll talk about this later," he said in a tone well-known by disappointed fathers everywhere._

* * *

Sam lay on her hospital bed – well, if you could call a foam mat on a metal frame a bed. _If Tucker thinks hospitals suck, he should try being stuck in a field hospital, the crybaby_.

_Oh, yeah_, she remembered. _He is in the hospital, because of me_.

Thoroughly miserable, she shifted a little and continued to stew in her own guilt. She had no clue how long she'd been lying there, only that it was late, she was tired, and she wanted desperately to go home already. …If her parents could forgive her.

Sick of staring at the ceiling, Sam closed her eyes. Even her body felt different now, ruled by rhythms of not just night and day, but a constant pull toward a source she knew far too well. First thing once she could get out of the compound, that had to go. She smiled, imagining how she would do it. Maybe she could convince Tucker to whip up a freeze ray? No, no, it's been done.

At least she knew Tucker would understand, eventually. He'd been possessed before, due to a poorly-worded and worse-timed wish and a wish-granting ghost with a sick sense of humor. If anyone would know how little control she'd had over her body and mind near the end, it would be him. Oh, he'd give her the cold shoulder and be generally nasty for a few weeks, but if she had the facts straight, that was pretty much the best she could expect. Considering what she had done?

…No, she would not be forgiven easily for this. She didn't deserve to be, after letting it do that.

Drawing in a deep breath, she opened her eyes, reveling in the fact that however changed, her body was her own again. Her mind, her memories – let every _thing_ she had ever owned get crushed to bits and burned to ashes, that was what mattered.

Shifting onto her side, careful not to tear out the IV stuck in her arm or disturb any of the suppression glyphs that had been drawn on the top sheet, Sam turned to stare at her nightstand. Or rather, at the memories that came with it. She smiled sweetly at the faintly glowing chip of blue ice, the vivid red of her heart's blood swirling at its core and slowly being absorbed into it. The entry wound had closed itself at some point between the invader's defeat and her reawakening. The Fentons had tested for regeneration, both by taking a cell sample and more immediately by making a small cut on her left arm, but it had simply scabbed over like any other minor injury and healed over the past few days. No, it had been a one-time event, a gift she had been given, and one she would not waste.

Sam knew the feel of Danny's energy almost as well as she knew herself, that shiver of cold power that reached almost to her heart and squeezed – and let go, every time. Looking back through her memories, she wondered how she hadn't noticed, then. How he had wanted her, both sides of him, reaching and grasping and always stopping just short of taking, out of fear of the consequences, and out of respect for her will. Danny would never, could never hurt her of his own free will. He would never have abandoned her.

Memories of that day swirling through her mind, a tempest in miniature, Sam made a promise to herself. She would find Danny and get him out of there. Tucker and Jazz would help They wanted him back, too. Jazz wanted her little brother back. Tucker wanted his big brother back. And Sam would get Danny back, no matter what.

* * *

Unnoticed by all but the ever-present watcher, two forces struggled, then gave in. The bubbling red at the center of the ice dissolved completely. The new-formed gem was a vibrant glimmering purple the exact shade of the girl's eyes.

Danny had always been a hopeless romantic.

* * *

A/N: So. Many. Botanical references. Pierre and Demilo are canon – a grapevine and a Venus Flytrap, specifically. The arrows are to indicate she's not speaking English, which is, again, canon in that episode.

"Fury" was _Urtica ferox_, otherwise known as ongaonga or the tree nettle. Take a normal stinging nettle, give it super-huge spines and a very nasty and very painful toxin, and then super-size the whole thing for good measure. It can kill you. No joke. Tucker's going to need a fairly long rehab period, and has just earned about a thousand bad*ss points for not just passing out.

"Pepe" was _Symplocarpus foetidus_, or skunk cabbage. It can in fact melt its way through snow, maintaining an ambient temperature of up to 70 degrees Fahrenheit in its immediate area. I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's smelly.

"Anya" was a flower from the genus _Galanthus_, most likely _G. nivalis_, commonly known as a snowdrop. Ditto on the melting through snow. The name refers to a somewhat obscure 1980s anime movie based on a traditional Russian folktale about a peasant girl who meets the twelve months, and snowdrops are featured in the film.

Last, in this context, dead-heading is a gardening term. It means removing dead flowerheads from a plant to encourage further blooming. Somehow, I don't think Sam is going to wait until they die, and when you think for a second about what flowers are to plants… Yes, Sam is feeling rather vindictive.

I swear I was not planning on writing something this long, and definitely not all in one go. I just started with a snippet of the flash-forward revenge scene and it snowballed. Now it's an AU rewrite of Urban Jungle. By the way, this happened long before Rebirth in Ice.


End file.
